


my heart sinks as i jump up

by blueprintofyourpast



Series: bridges [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Disney and Sony can suck it, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, Panic Attacks, Peter Parker is Smitten, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, So is MJ, They're just very slow on the uptake, everything is awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 07:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20336182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueprintofyourpast/pseuds/blueprintofyourpast
Summary: It’s not that he doesn’t think she’s pretty. He knows that she is. She looks nice. She always does. There’s a high chance she’s trying to look everything but nice by donning combat boots and military jackets instead of skirts and pastel sweaters, but well, the joke’s on her.(She’s actually kinda gorgeous with her wild hair and perpetual death stare – and there’s nothing she can do about it. It’s just that he can’t do anything about it either.)He can’t do anything about the gush of warmth that spreads in his belly all of a sudden, and it’s something else alright. It’s unsettling and comforting, which, in turn, is confusing as hell, and he should really stop looking at her, but he can’t.He can’t move, he can’t stop smiling (like an absolute creep, he’s sure of it), and he can’t remember why he was on the verge of a panic attack a minute ago.Thank God....Or: Peter Parker has a hard time adjusting to the post-blip world. As fate would have it, Michelle Jones, cynic by choice and lone wolf par excellence, plays a big role in his recovery without even knowing it.





	my heart sinks as i jump up

**Author's Note:**

> hello.
> 
> this one-shot is the first part of a series named _bridges_. it's my first attempt at writing a mcu fic and i'm not a native speaker, so please know that i've tried my best. the title of this fic is a direct quote from _breezeblocks_ by alt-j.
> 
> anyhoo, please enjoy and leave a comment if you want, i obviously can’t tell you what to do.
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> disclaimer: i don’t own the spider-man franchise… even though i wish i did at this point.

Three weeks before Christmas break, their teachers decide that now is the perfect time for yet another field trip. Not to MoMA, but to the former Avengers Tower because apparently, the entire building has been turned into a dumping ground for useless memorabilia: there’s an IMAX theatre, a memorial wall, a whole exhibit dealing with Hulk’s elastic pants, and another one dedicated to the history of Black Widow’s haircuts. It’s kinda ridiculous if you ask Peter, but of course _nobody_ asks him.

Except for Ned.

“You think they got their hands on one of your old suits?”

His voice carries a well-known air of poorly concealed excitement (after all, he’s Spider-Man’s best friend and self-appointed partner in crime-fighting), but for once, Queen’s quick-witted, spandex-wearing boy wonder finds himself fumbling for the right words.

And that’s just odd.

Well, as far as Peter knows, most of the exhibition pieces were donated by S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to distract the public from what’s currently going on behind the scenes. It’s all about the power of nostalgic sensationalism: give the people what they think they want – that is, heart-warming anecdotes and silly superhero gossip – and they forget about the things that really matter. 

(Like, the fact that Thanos was probably just one of many extraterrestrial maniacs with an alien army at his command, whereas the Avengers Initiative has been put on ice for the time being.)

Despite Mr Fury’s furious pleading (heh), everyone pretty much went their separate ways after the funeral: Thor, the Guardians, and Captain Marvel went back to space, Captain America went back in time to marry his World War II sweetheart, Clint went back to his family, Pepper and Morgan went back to Malibu, and Peter went back to Queens where May pulled him into a hug, sobbed into his hair, and told him that they had to find a new apartment because their old one was now inhabited by a lovely Lithuanian family.

So, they moved from 44th Street to 42nd, bought new furniture, and watched a couple of documentaries, specifically created for those, who had missed out on the past five years and were now in deep need of a thorough recap. May found a new job at her old company and Peter learned that thanks to the blip, he had to repeat his junior year. Things began to feel normal again – except that weren’t. 

(They aren’t. 

They never will be. 

Not for him. 

Not for Spider-Man.)

“You okay, dude?”

He has half the mind not to wince at the question.

He tends to zone out from time to time and he hates that. He hates that sometimes, the most random sounds – the gurgle of the thermostat in his room, a car honking outside, the clatter of the 7 train as it weaves its way through Sunnyside – make him jump and flinch like a scared animal. He hates that sometimes, everything – even the khao soi at his favourite Thai restaurant – tastes like ashes and rubble. He hates that sometimes, putting on the suit makes him nervous and nauseous and unable to move unless Karen is there to talk him through his motions.

“Yeah,” he blurts out, and his voice does that stupid thing where it becomes all squeaky, indicating that he is, in fact, not okay, “Ton – Iron Man used to take care of my old suits. I don’t know if he kept them or what happened to them after he – _you know_.”

He swallows hard and tells himself not to think too much of his blunder. Ned knows who he’s talking about, but if there’s one thing Peter knows, it’s that calling dead people by their made-up names hurts a little less than calling them by their real names. Same goes for addressing their… untimely departure in general.

“Sorry,” Ned says somewhat empathetically before he shoots him an encouraging grin, “But there’s gonna be a Spider-Man exhibition, right? I mean, you were _there_. You went to space and everything.”

He did.

He went to space.

(As a matter of fact, he died and came back to life there and it was _terrifying_ and then he was sent back to Earth to fight a purple warlord with a giant-sized God complex, but he can’t tell Ned anything about that, now, can he? He can’t tell him about Thanos. He can’t tell him about the blood and the dust and the noise and the monsters. He can’t tell him that he, your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, was running around the battlefield, dodging laser beams, and scared out of his fucking mind.

He can’t even tell May.

He can’t tell _anyone_ because if he starts to talk about it, he won’t be able to stop because Karen claims that he’s traumatised and traumatised people should take some time to recover and people who are in recovery can’t help other people and he really needs to help other people because if he doesn’t help other people he can’t be Spider-Man and if he can’t be Spider-Man he’s just Peter Parker and if he’s just Peter Parker he’s going to lose his mind because Peter Parker is a 16-year-old high school student and 16-year-old high school students shouldn’t be traumatised or lose their fucking minds or go to fucking space in the fucking first place because, again, _they’re just 16-fucking-year-old high school students_ and holy fucking shit noneofthismakesanyfuckingsensewhatthefu – )

His breath gets stuck between his lungs and he slaps on a smile.

“Yeah,” he says again, “It was cool.”

“Dude, I bet it was.”

Tragically oblivious to his best friend’s inner meltdown, Ned launches into a giddy monologue about how awesome if would be if the gift shop at the tower had toy web shooters or a book about Titan. Or about space dwarves. Or the Quantum Realm.

And Peter?

Peter smiles and smiles as his stomach drops and churns, and then he ends up doing what he always does when the memories – of Thanos, the battle, the dead people, everything – sprawl and swell inside his skull until he can’t see straight: he grits his teeth and tries to focus on his surroundings.

He tries to focus on the bus and the chatter of his classmates. On Mr Harrington, who’s busy doing headcounts every five minutes due to his experiential fear of losing a student, and Flash, who makes a show of reminding everyone that the number of his Instagram followers increases by the second. He even tries to focus on Betty Brant, who can’t stop whining about the weather, and when that fails to do the trick, he tries to focus on other things.

The snow-capped skyscrapers that stand tall in the distance, and the grey slush that covers Queensboro Bridge like a thick, translucent blanket. The sight of Manhattan without a doughnut-shaped spaceship looming in the sky. The clouds and the snow. People swinging at their car horns and seething behind their steering wheels.

He sighs.

They’re stuck in traffic again and it’s a weird call-back to their unsuccessful field trip five years ago. He doesn’t know how to feel about that, so flicks his gaze towards the tower and he starts to think about the man who built it. The man he held onto while his body dissolved into nothing. The man he’s been mourning for the past two and a half months. The man who’s literally everywhere these days.

_No, no, no. Don’t do that. Don’t go there._

_Focus on something else._

Something that doesn’t sound like Karen warning him about his vitals. Something that doesn’t smell like burnt flesh and charred debris. Something that doesn’t feel like Pepper pulling him away from his dying mentor. Something that doesn’t taste like salt and sorrow. Something – 

He shakes his head and his smile slips out of place.

His heart screams and quakes in his chest.

He’s sweating.

He needs to _stop_.

He shoots a glance at Ned, who’s still talking a mile a minute. He stares out of the window and realises that this is bad. Really, really bad. Probably worse than a couple of weeks ago when he had a dream about screeching aliens and exploding spaceships. 

(He woke with a start and practically leapt out of his bed then, scrambling for his web shooters and gasping for air. He was barely responsive when May came rushing into his room. It was the helplessness in her voice that snapped him out of it and subsequently brought him to tears.)

_Stop._

Gritting his teeth even harder, he forces his eyes to latch onto the first thing that invades his line of sight: a hint of movement in the seat behind him, splattered across the bus window where melting snowflakes slide down the smudgy glass like warm frosting slides down the side of a cake.

He blinks, not entirely sure what it is that prompts him to turn around and duck his head so that he can peek through the gap between his and Ned’s seats. Nonetheless, he takes the rare opportunity to be the observant one for a moment.

There she is, stoic and detached as ever.

Her grey backpack serves as her seatmate and she’s sitting cross-legged with her fingers curled around a crinkled vintage copy of _The Black Dahlia_*. She’s wrapped up in a dark blue duffle coat and a red knitted scarf. Her hair is pulled into a messy knot that rests high on top of her head. She’s wearing headphones, too.

Thanks to his enhanced hearing, he can make out the mumbling bassline and the smooth trumpets of an old jazz standard. For some reason, he starts to wonder if she’s always been into that type of music. If she has a record player at home. If she hums to along to it when she’s alone. 

(The thought resuscitates his smile in a matter of seconds and this time, it doesn’t feel perfunctory at all.)

He doesn’t know much about Michelle Jones. He doesn’t even know if they’re friends. It’s hard to tell because she’s basically the human embodiment of a highly-advanced Rubik’s Cube that tends to mix up its colours automatically every time you think you finally managed to shift each face into the right position.

For some reason, his smile grows a bit softer.

She’s not cold-hearted or a psychopath or anything. She’s just incredibly hard to read. A walking, scowling mystery. A surly spectre that lingers in the background, smart and sharp-tongued and ruthless in her cynicism.

She’s aloof, yes, but she has the numbers to back it all up, and she can make you fear for your life by doing as much as quirk her left brow. It’s beautiful to watch, especially when she uses that superpower of hers against people like Flash. Besides that, she cares about a lot of stuff most of their classmates don’t waste too much thought on – and the second she lifts her gaze from her book, Peter’s cheeks grow hot with shame. 

Blinking rapidly, he’s about to turn away because he can feel it coming, the soul-crushing one-liner about his alleged loserdom she’s definitively five seconds away from spitting in his direction, but in the end, she just stares back at him, raises her brows, and there’s a wrinkle on her forehead and then he freezes with mild horror because today of all days her face isn’t obscured by a trademark strand of curly hair, and he’s never seen her like that before and just – _wow_.

“What, Parker?” she growls.

_Yeah. What indeed? What are you doing?_

His mouth falls open.

It’s not that he doesn’t think she’s pretty. He knows that she is. She looks nice. She always does. There’s a high chance she’s trying to look everything but nice by donning combat boots and military jackets instead of skirts and pastel sweaters, but well, the joke’s on her. 

(She’s actually kinda gorgeous with her wild hair and perpetual death stare – and there’s nothing she can do about it. It’s just that he can’t do anything about it either.)

He can’t do anything about the gush of warmth that spreads in his belly all of a sudden, and it’s something else alright. It’s unsettling and comforting, which, in turn, is confusing as hell, and he should really stop looking at her, but he can’t. 

He can’t move, he can’t stop smiling (like an absolute creep, he’s sure of it), and he can’t remember why he was on the verge of a panic attack a minute ago.

_Thank God._

Her frown deepens.

Oh, right. 

She’s caught him staring and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to defend himself. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to tell her. 

(Well, her eyes are bright with indignation and he _could_ tell her that they’re the shade of brown that reminds him of chestnuts and wet pine cones, but there’s no chance in hell he’s going to embarrass himself in front of her even more.)

“You – I – uh – n-nothing.”

_Smooth, Parker._

He turns away and sinks back into the cushions just in time for her to kick the back of his seat. Ned, with all his endless wisdom, regards him with a shrug.

His face is still on fire. He has no idea what just happened. He starts to fiddle with the zipper of his anorak and forces his lips into a thin line, counting snowflakes and skyscrapers.

“Weirdo,” he hears her mutter behind him, and his heart does a funny thing – a flip or a bounce or something stupid like that – as her song, along with the chatter and the traffic noise, rolls back in to soothe and haunt him all at once.

**Author's Note:**

> * _The Black Dahlia_ is a novel by James Ellroy.
> 
> btw: [this](https://blueprintofyourpast.tumblr.com) is my tumblr. it's full of artsy bullshit and other boring stuff. feel free to check it out.


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